


we look beautiful (stepping over velvet rope together)

by softshocks



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F, awkward people having an awkward start to their sex life, minor spoilers for crimson flower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 03:41:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20351797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softshocks/pseuds/softshocks
Summary: You don’t get it on the first try. Or the next. Or the one after that.





	we look beautiful (stepping over velvet rope together)

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted some cute sexy stuff for them because while they’re both ridic hot they also are just… clueless… but perhaps not as clueless
> 
> Title from forever by shura, I was writing this and listening to her new album and my heart fell out of my chest reading the lyrics omg
> 
> Presenting one of my unionizing fe3h fics as a gift to the horny4edelgard community

There were very few things that you pride yourself with, and on top of that very short list was that you are an exceptionally fast learner. 

Never once in your life did you stutter or hesitate when picking up a new blade to learn with, or new fighting stances to master. Even teaching at the academy, an occupation you never once spared a second thought for before, hadn’t been easy yet it was as if being there, instructing them, came naturally. Like instinct. 

You were always a person of instinct. It has saved your life - and endangered it, as well - countless times. 

Turning your sword against Rhea, against this millennia-old institution that had its claws on Fódlan, it had been an instinctual response that she never regretted one bit. It had been to protect your students, at first, no matter the consequences. During the war, it struck you that it was more than that. It was always more than that and you noticed it, from the moment you stepped foot in that monastery.

It brought you to this side of the war, with Edelgard, with your Black Eagles, and you couldn’t find yourself anywhere else. 

The war is over and a new dawn awaits all of you, and after giving Edelgard the ring your father gave your mother, you have long stopped pretending you feel nothing. Even before that, the open affection and adoration mirrored in both your faces have been spotted by many of your friends. 

She is as busy as ever, but you find time for and comfort in each other. She wears your ring proudly, and you think you have loved her forever - in a different way before, but it was love all the same. 

So it comes as a surprise to find yourself fumbling, quite miserably, with something as menial as your feelings. Towards Edelgard.

(_ Menial feelings _? You scold yourself. Your devotion to and fondness for her were anything but. You love her deeply. All of her, when she’s the fearless empress who led the demise of the Church and when she’s just El, who sleeps with her mouth open and suffers from sniffles every morning.) 

Any sort of intimacy with her had lit a torrid mix of emotions that move inside you and because of everything that has transpired, it seems as if you aren’t as good as you were in locking what you felt behind your placid demeanor. 

The touching. Sometimes looking in her eyes as she rubs a calloused thumb on your cheek makes your entire body feel like it ran the length of Fódlan threefold. When she kisses you sweetly, you’re sure you’ve crossed the afterlife even if you know you’ll never see eternal salvation after everything you’ve done. 

You once saw her in only her smallclothes, when she finally allowed you to see all of her body, and you broke your favorite teacup in the process. Later, she kisses you with fervor, teasing you about the broken teacup, and leaves you dumbfounded as she attends to her duties for today. 

Your instincts have never let you down, and you’re not about to let it do so now. 

-

Today is one of those moments of repose where you find yourself lounging around with Edelgard in her quarters, away from her responsibilities of repairing the war-torn land and ensuring its stability. 

She lies in bed with you, in a cotton slip to stay cool in the dry air, and has a hand on your abdomen. 

You don’t particularly remember how it led from one thing to another but it escalates from light banter to a tickle fight that has her above you - blushing profusely, but triumphant, like in everything she does - and now you kiss like there is no tomorrow, and she moves her body against you as if her life depended on it. 

She is breathless and beautiful and you love her, and so you ask: “El, are we…” 

Edelgard hums into your ear. Her hand fists in your black shirt and on the sheets you lay on. “Are we what?” 

You feel incredibly embarrassed, but you nod down to answer her question. 

“Oh, I—I don’t know,” Edelgard mumbles, and if you didn’t want the whole world to swallow you whole right now, you’d tease her for being embarrassed. “Have you ever…”

“No, I’ve never wanted to. With anyone.” You touch her incredibly warm and soft cheek. “Except you.”

She smiles, so sweetly, and looks so shy when she clasps your hand. “I feel the same,” Edelgard smiles, but she looks away. “I don’t have any experience with someone else but… I want to.” 

You brush the hair from her face and kiss her forehead. “We don’t have to,” you tell her, even if you want it - very much so - as well. You know how Edelgard prides herself on knowing many things and when she doesn’t, it takes a copious amount of encouragement and challenge to get her past it. 

You see that same kind of determination in her eyes, and you find that you can’t ever find it in yourself to say no to it. “I want to,” she says again, firmer this time. “Do you?”

Edelgard gasps quietly when you kiss her in response, moving your hands under her slip to touch more of her. More of her skin. You never felt like this, insatiable even if she moves above you so sinfully, and the scars that ridge both your skins make it difficult to tell where you end and where she begins. 

Edelgard kisses everywhere, from your chin to your cheek, to under your ear and to the shell of it, you are subjected to her very labored breathing and her whimpers in tandem with her body reacting to your hands finding the skin underneath her breasts. 

“Is that alright?” 

“Yes,” and she gasps some more when you adjust your leg and it finds the space between Edelgard’s legs, with her slip dangerously settled on her hips. “T-that was good.” 

You pull away to look at her. “It was?” You didn’t even know you can do that. When Edelgard nods, shyly, not meeting your eyes, you continue. “More?” You don’t know what ‘more’ entails and you’re slowly running out of ideas, but thankfully Edelgard shakes her head. 

“I don’t know if I might last long,” she whispers, touching your face with aching tenderness. She blushes, always a pretty thing, and looks away. “I’ve wanted this for quite some time.” 

“Last long?” 

The gentle expression is replaced with confoundedness and you wonder why, frowning. “Before I… you know… orgasm?” 

The word doesn’t ring a bell. “What’s that?” 

“Are you teasing me? At a time like this?” When she realizes you aren’t, the hands touching your face move back to her own, covering her flustered features. “Am I seriously the one explaining this to you?” She mutters. “I-I can’t take this.” 

Coming to a sitting position to level with Edelgard, you try to pry her hands from her face, but you fail. “What’s that?” 

“Ask Dorothea.” 

“I shall ask her now, in this state.” You were only half-joking, willing to go to your friend if it pleases Edelgard. Part of you hesitates to ask her such things, yet you and Edelgard trust Dorothea with your lives and so much more, that this small thing is practically nothing. 

That does the trick, and her hands find your shoulders to ground herself, probably. She looks at the ceiling, and unintentionally exposes the pale column of her neck spattered with moles you want to kiss. So you do exactly that. 

“It’s—after some, uh, coupling that it happens. Especially if your partner is very… attentive to your needs in the bedroom. It’s the best feeling in the world.” Most likely occurring to her that you think she’s lying about her inexperience - which you don’t, of course - she stipulates, “or so everyone says.” 

“Does Dorothea know?”

“She says it’s like, uh, a simmering pot that overflows. For women, anyway. It takes longer for us. And it’s much more difficult to… attain.” 

You nod, touching your chin, digesting the information. “Have you had one?” 

Edelgard’s eyes are still trained on the ceiling, so you pull her face down to meet yours. “Yes. Not with someone else, though. So I have never made… someone, uh, feel that.” 

“Would you like to?” You ask, genuinely, openly. You’re not entirely sure if you can make her feel that way, and if Edelgard seems to have some semblance of experience as compared to you.

“M-me?” She stammers, eyes everywhere except you and a certain part of you is jealous of the objects her eyes lay upon. “I’m not sure if I’d last long, I told you.” 

You shake your head and clarify. “Would you like to make me feel that? Just imagine what you do to yourself, you do to me. Does it work like that?” 

Edelgard, empress of the new world, shrugs. “I don’t know. Possibly.” 

“We can try.” She nods, and you touch your forehead to hers, breathing in deeply. Your hands find residence on her waist, supple and soft and lovely. Then you kiss her, with the same amount of fervor, and bring both of you down to have her above you again, in the same position, with Edelgard’s weight resting on you comfortably. 

It doesn’t take much for things to escalate yet again, and you might just have to accept that kissing Edelgard will always light a fire in you and that ending up in bed like this when she threads her fingers into your hair sounds like a lovely consequence. 

She moves her hips in such a way that every time her body makes contact with you, the heat that pools in your stomach grows with each movement. You let out a sigh, and she kisses you one last time before moving to your ear, busying herself with sucking your earlobe into her mouth. It sends a cold shock up and down your body, and your hips rise to meet hers. 

“El,” her name comes unbidden from your mouth. You don’t know why you say it, but you just needed to call out to her even if she was so very close to you, but also not close enough.

She hears it, oh, how she hears it. “Byleth, teach me how to touch you.” 

“What’s good, what’s not good?” You manage, only barely, because Edelgard’s voice is hot and rough and several pitches lower in your ear. 

She nods, and it occurs to you that you are learning, too, and that you have always learned from her as she did from you. 

Her hands make its way from your stomach to your smallclothes to divest you of damp mess. “Can I touch you?” She says, and you nod. “If you want to stop, let me know?” 

You kiss her, sweetly, because she deserves nothing less than all the tenderness you feel for her. 

Edelgard’s eyes never leave yours when she touches you, for the first time, taking her time to explore. She touches with intention, and you can’t breathe, and she seems to find what she was looking for as you jolt in surprise. 

“Good?” She says, and you nod, with a lack of words to say at the sensation. You want more, and so you tell her, and if you weren’t in her mercy you would tease her for the utterly pleased look that crosses her blushing face. 

In the haziness, you try to observe the actions of her fingers. Circles, side to side, and when you say you preferred the circles, she follows through and does exactly that, ever attentive. 

She seems to circle on a particular bud, one that turns your nerve endings cold and then warm and then cold again, and still you sweat through your remaining clothing and onto Edelgard’s sheets. 

Edelgard, determined to - as she said - get you there, does so for a few minutes, placing open-mouthed kisses along your body. She even pulls down some of your now-loose chest wraps to kiss the tops of your breast, and it feels to tight now but you can’t seem to find the strength to remove them.

Removing them meant moving, and it might offset that progress Edelgard makes in letting you plateau, and then fall. 

And yet, as the moments pass by - they feel too long, in this room, at this moment - you just seem to… plateau. The feeling, it’s there, but it slips through your fingers and Edelgard’s as well. 

And then you just… stay on that high, that warmth, yet it never spills over. It’s pleasurable, yes, but it isn’t the spilling that Edelgard mentioned Dorothea said it would be. 

The moment passes, and Edelgard collapses on top of you with a small thud, red-faced and panting. “That... was harder than I anticipated.” Your skin sticks together uncomfortably, yet you hold her closer. You notice that her arm lays limp at her side. 

“Is your arm okay?” 

“I think I may have momentarily lost motor controls but I’ll be fine,” she whispers into your chest, but you feel her smile on your skin. You don’t know why the two of you speak in hushed tones but maybe it was to preserve the gentle and tender atmosphere. “Did you—” 

“Overflow like a boiling pot?” 

“—orgasm?” 

“Is that what it’s called?” 

Edelgard reddens, hides her face in your chest, as if she weren’t the most powerful person in the realm, as if she hadn’t had her hand between your legs. “Did you?” 

Thinking deeply, you tighten your embrace around her, knowing she might flee the moment you say: “no, I don’t think so.” 

She reacts as expected, severely embarrassed and positively disappointed in herself for letting you down when she hadn’t - it was amazing, and it was everything you wanted, and Edelgard was the attentive lover needed to get there, but for some reason, it wasn’t happening. 

Yet you feel just as sated and content and happy, lying here with Edelgard, with her cute pout. 

You console her, as you usually did when she felt as if she was underperforming. “Don’t worry, it was amazing.” 

“But you didn’t—”

You kiss her to stop her from going any further. “I don’t think I needed to.” She opens her mouth to retort, but no sound escapes her lips, so you kiss her again to keep her preoccupied. “I felt it. It was good. I was almost there.” 

Edelgard giggles shyly, tiredly, and puts a hand under her chin to look at you from her position on your chest. “But I got tired.”

“It’s hard, I can imagine.” You say, quietly, running your hand through her soft hair. “How’s your arm?”

She moves it, but it falls back to the bed with a thump. “Tired, but alright. I used my weapon hand.” 

You hum, with sleep washing over you, and you remember: “shall I return the favor?”

“What’s there to return?” She says, with a small laugh, and you tap her backside in admonishment. Edelgard shakes her head, her eyes drooping slightly after she yawns. “I’m tired.” 

You kiss her forehead before a lovely afternoon nap visits the two of you. 

-

“Ouch!” 

“Byleth! I’m so sorry!” She scrambles to a sitting position, away from you. “Are you okay!?”

You nod from below her, clutching the spot of your forehead that had accidentally met with her elbow. 

“I think we’re too exhausted to continue this,” she says, just recently divested of all her clothing, rubbing the spot. She moves closer to massage it in hopes of easing the pain. 

You agree. Even if she looks absolutely ravishing, it had been a long day, for both of you. You shuck your own wraps and smallclothes and hold her from behind, naked as the day you were born. 

-

“I am never,” a kiss, “sending you,” another kiss, “to a fortnight-long,” another one, “diplomatic convoy,” she hazards a bite to your neck that shakes your soul, “ever again.” 

You want to laugh because you’re positive she doesn’t mean what she’s saying, yet it comes out as a moan as she pushes you harder against the wooden door of the meeting room after she, not Hubert on behalf of her, dismisses the whole convoy brief, her right-hand man included. 

_ It won’t be missed _, you think, entertaining the thought of never leaving Edelgard’s vicinity for tedious work that you’ve done in the past few weeks and the paperwork that comes after it. 

Being away from her for the first time, in five years, was more difficult for her, yet it wasn’t easy for you as well. Sleeping was hard, and your body longed for her warmth. 

Edelgard was an adorable sleeping partner who clings to your body and holds you tighter when she feels you moving away to rise early or attend to bodily functions. 

You divest her of her clothing and she gasps when your hands find the backs of her legs to hoist her up. Your displays of strength have always been something she liked very much, and her hands touch your arms with a quiet sort of desperation, feeling the scars and the hardened muscles. 

How the tables were turned so easily now, as you set Edelgard gently on the bed, both of your beds, as the room you had originally stayed in has not been slept in for months ever since you started sharing your bed with her. 

You stand above her, the late afternoon light casting a lovely golden glow on her, and you love her, ardently. She’s left in her smallclothes and her chest wraps, with the cross-shaped scar on her chest peeking out of it. 

“What’s the matter?” She says, squirming underneath your gaze. Edelgard tucks her arms to hide her chest, blushes, looks away. “Stop that.” 

You chuckle, and then lean down to kiss her, and you feel more than see how her toes curl under your ministrations.

“You’re beautiful, El,” you whisper, and you mean it, tracing the scars left by her childhood and the ones left by the burden placed upon her shoulders. She says nothing, only further refusing to meet your eyes, and you kiss her cheek, her neck, the shell of her ear - which rewards you with a sigh that goes straight to the heat of your stomach, building up. 

You know it, until this part, and now you stop your movements. 

She lifts her head from the bed, eyes hazy and unfocused, and the blush from her cheeks spreads to the rest of her chest. It’s a lovely sight, and you watch her for a second longer to commit the image to your memory. 

“Wh—why did you—” she manages to get out, circling her arms around you to pull you closer. She reaches behind her to unwrap the bandages on her chest, and then it hits you, what you have to do. 

You follow her and do the rest of the job, and Edelgard giggles when you pull her up to do so. It unwinds around her, like a present, and you kiss her, her arms raised above her head as you undo the last of it, tossing it to the ground. 

Edelgard is so beautiful and your heart thumps madly in your chest as you think hard about what good you’ve ever done for your paths to cross, for you to be the reason the redness of her cheeks and the tips of her ears reach the top of her breasts, past the white scars scattered her skin. 

Her breasts are lovely, pink-tipped and pale, and you’ve never been someone who cared particularly about these things. 

_ Until now, _you think, feeling your throat thicken at the sight. You hands, they move to touch her, but you remember to ask, always. “Is this—”

Edelgard, who can be a person of little words at times, kisses you, catches your wrists to place your hands on her breasts. 

Soft, supple, pliant. You squeeze tentatively, palms grazing her hard nipples and she gasps. “You like that?” 

Edelgard nods and sighs into your mouth. You flick your thumb against the nub and she arches into you, resembling a taut bow, with her hands fisting into your hair. You assume she likes it, and so you do it again, and the hands in your hair grip tighter. Your kisses turn from sweet to absolutely sinful, and she moves back to give you more space to touch her.

“Byleth,” it melts easily into a sigh and a whimper when you take her nipples between the pads of your fingers and roll it. It’s something Edelgard seems to like very much, so you flick both of them with your fingers the best as you can when she wraps her arms tightly around your neck, making delicious sounds in your ear.

You pull back, much to both of your displeasure, but your lips are close enough to touch. “Should I use my mouth?” 

Edelgard flushes, ducking her head shyly. “If you want.” 

And so you move to put ample space between you to take her nipple between your lips. 

Nothing can prepare you for the way it shakes the ground you walk on when she lets out a cry - not pained, from the way she holds your head close - but one of pleasure. “Good?” 

“V-very.” 

You spend a few moments kissing one, and then the other, yet as you adjust your position your tongue accidentally grazes the nub and she cries out, once more, and moves closer to your mouth if that were even possible. 

“Again,” she demands, not like in the battlefield but like she was chasing something, and you nod, with her breast still in your mouth; always her follower, inside and outside the safety of her chambers. 

You circle your tongue around the nub, flicking with it, and you’re having a lot of fun despite the growing ache between your legs that you’re sure your smallclothes is a mess. She moves her hips even more - gyrates, really - the more attention you lavish on her chest. Edelgard’s hands on your hair make it to your shoulders, nails digging deeply that it almost hurts but you let it. 

It’s positively sinful, everything about this, from the sounds of your mouth on her breast, sucking the salt from her skin, to the way she muffles the sounds she’s making into her your joined hands. 

When you unintentionally graze your teeth against her nipple and she jolts, you know that you will never love anyone else this way for the rest of your life. 

So it comes as a surprise when she pulls your head away, halting your worshipping, instead she kisses you even as she was breathless. You can taste the grin on her face, and can’t help but return it. 

“Did you not like it?” You ask, your heart still racing. She never moves from her seat on your lap, as your foreheads press together, your heavy breathing falling to a singular rhythm. 

“I did,” she laughs, one of your favorite sounds, and meets your lips again like she can’t get enough. At the back of your head you wonder why, among all of the people she could have, she chose you to be the one she kisses the most. “I liked it. Too much.” 

You tilt your head in confusion, but your hand idly traces the ridges of her chest scar. “Oh?” 

She turns her head to avert her eyes and you take the opportunity to press your lips under her ears. “Seeing you again after that fortnight apart made me forget that I am to meet Mercedes and select flowers for our betrothal supper.” 

You rub your forehead at the thought of the occasion, which had been to the insistence of Ferdinand, as part of a noble tradition that you didn’t understand. “Right,” you say, but you make no move to separate from Edelgard. She seems to share the same sentiment about leaving for the marketplace. 

“I missed you, El,” you say into the base of her neck. You haven’t been one to miss people, except dad, but being away from Edelgard had been an ache that never subsided whenever you slept and her body wasn’t slotted against yours.

You were both lonely people before, but with Edelgard, doing things you were accustomed to doing alone simply did not feel right anymore. 

“I missed you, as well,” the small pout on her lips told her she felt exactly the same. She hazards a glance to her divested clothing and her messy hair. “Mercedes may have to wait a while longer.” 

You want to console her, but you’re not sure what the woman thinks of tardiness, but you never want to fall from Mercedes’ good graces. Edelgard may not even be spared from that, so you try to move her off, albeit reluctantly.

When she doesn’t, you stand to carry her to the dressing room and she laughs but doesn’t order you to put her down as she usually does.

If you weren’t sure she missed you before, you’re definitely sure now. 

“Get dressed or Mercedes will be cross with you,” you tell her, with a brief tap to her backside that warrants you a narrowed, blushing look. That, however, does the trick and Edelgard pulls open a chest to pick casual clothing for the marketplace. 

-

“I’m sorry, El,” you apologize, but she only shakes her head and wipes her fingers on a towel that sat on top of a dresser at the side of her bed. “I lost track of my moon cycle.” 

“I told you, it’s alright. It happens.” You feel the dip in the bed, too taken over by embarrassment to look at her. She had touched you but the twisting in your abdomen told you that this… was probably not the best time for anything beyond kissing and touching. You’ve already worn a cycle cloth as to not ruin Edelgard’s surprisingly mediocre sheets. 

Edelgard’s hand, rough and scarred, touches your chin with a gentleness that adds a familiar pressure to the middle of your ribs. She kisses you sweetly, the mood and fervor passing, but it’s sweet all the same. “Sorry,” you apologize once more. For good measure. 

She laughs and kisses you again, lying on the bed, beckoning you to come closer. You follow her, as you do, and would do for the rest of your life. 

“Stop that,” she says, nuzzling into your cheek. Her slip, which had earlier climbed to expose the expanse of her body, now covers all of it and you curse female physiology for interrupting your previous task of undressing Edelgard. “It’s fine. Though I’d probably recommend you make it a habit to track your cycles.” 

“You say that all the time.” 

“It’s because you don’t listen to me. You can ask Professor Manuela.” 

“She doesn’t seem the type to do that, too.” You chuckle at the exasperation coloring her voice. “Why do I have to do so? I’m perfectly fine.” 

“Why sh—I don’t know why I have to argue about your health.” She taps your chest slightly in admonishment. Then she stills, at the realization. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you.” 

You let out a laugh that disturbs the resting of Edelgard’s head on your chest. “I couldn’t resist, your majesty. Forgive me.”

If Edelgard had been in a sour mood, she would have moved away in annoyance. Yet tonight, she clings to you tighter. Perhaps it really was alright, and you forget the severe embarrassment you felt earlier. 

“I don’t know why I put up with you,” she says quietly, but not unkindly. “If you keep this up, you’ll be sleeping on that uncomfortable duvet over there.”

She makes no move to take heed of her words. You comb your hands into her soft, white hair, in the way you always wanted, unbothered - yet still embarrassed - by her empty threat. “Of course.” 

-

It was cool tonight, thus the curtains surrounding Edelgard’s bed flow in the direction of the wind, soundless as ever. The only thing you can hear are her soft sighs and whimpers and you marvel at being able to elicit these reactions from her when many months ago, you never even spared any thought to these things.

And now, it seems that in moments like this, this desire that had once been a foreign feeling is all that you can ever think about. 

Edelgard is all that you can ever think about and you wonder if it was because Sothis was gone, or it was just because you were so deeply in love with Edelgard and that you’ve never had the chance to feel this way about anyone before. Now, when Edelgard kisses you and teases your lips with her tongue, you’re sure that you can never love anyone else.

Your hands trail further south from underneath Edelgard, and her sighs get progressively louder at each moment. Her slip is discarded somewhere on the stone floor and the light from the moon casts a lovely glow on her skin. 

Yet tonight, she seems to have other plans with the way you see that familiar, single-minded determination on the face of the woman you are devoted to. 

“I learned something,” she presses kisses to your neck and places a nip at the spot you realized was more sensitive than the rest and your body grows restless with anticipation. 

For what, you aren’t sure, but you trust Edelgard. 

You’ve removed your chest wraps earlier on, and you remain in your smallclothes, not even feeling the wind on your skin because of how hot it is, how hot it is to have Edelgard kiss a dangerous path down your body as she clumsily touches your breasts and flicks your nipples with uncharacteristically clumsy with one hand, and the other on your abdomen, clearly enjoying the flex of the hard muscle due to her ministrations.

You are on fire and you wonder if she still has a semblance of magic in her from the way your skin feels ablaze. 

Perhaps there was always a flame inside her, and it briefly crosses your mind that you want to be consumed by it.

And consumed by it you were, as she kisses you above your smallclothes, and Edelgard hooks her fingers at the side. “May I?” she asks, somewhat shyly, and at the back of head, you call her _ cute _. 

“What will you do?” You ask, genuinely curious. 

“I’ll… kiss you,” Edelgard replies, her cheeks darkening even more. She looks as red as her imperial regalia. “Here.” 

You find it in yourself to giggle and grin. “Where’d you learn that?” 

“It—it doesn’t matter,” she says, indignantly. “You may say no and I will understand. But I want to do this… for you.” 

You nod, because she is very eager, and there must be something to be done about the ache between your legs and the flames under your skin. 

Edelgard divests you of your clothing and you feel bare, vulnerable, more so than you ever have in your life. Yet you love her, and she kisses the top of your hip, your thigh. You thread your hands in your hair because you want to keep touching her, and you’re unsure where you place your hands. 

The world shifts she kisses you where you need it, at the origin of the ache that has grown in the duration of the period you and Edelgard fell in bed together. Your back arches and you thought it would quench the flames inside you but it only burns brighter. 

“Good?” She asks, voice low, and the vibration zips up your spine. You can only nod, rendered speechless, then she continues. 

You feel her tongue on that bud that she first touched some moons ago, and while that had been great, this was exceptional, and the heat of her breath is slowly bringing you back to that plateau, suspended in the air. 

Nothing could have prepared you to hazard a glance at Edelgard between your legs, her head of white hair moving as she kissed you there, and in the haze of your pleasure you understand why people worship images of any deity. 

If you would kiss the floor before any statue, it would be marble shaped in the image of Edelgard’s head between your legs. 

And how it feels like being worshipped. Edelgard was the one to destroy the images of the false saints yet she treats you with a reverence that one would think she worships daily. 

You climb up that plateau and you worry that you’ll stay there and never tumble over, like a few times before, and then Edelgard massages the bones of your hips and licks a long stripe upwards.

Then you tumble. 

It blinds you, momentarily, and it feels as if the flames underneath your skin turn into tiny tendrils of ice, spreading through your body. It feels like you’re expanding, and then contracting, the skin of your body feeling so small and so vast, and this whole ordeal renders you breathless and sated. 

_ Endless, endless, endless, _you feel, as you’re brought back to earth. The dark blue canopy of Edelgard’s bed looks like the expanse of the sky in your room that you don’t even feel Edelgard kissing up your body and under your chin. 

When your breathing comes back to a relatively normal pace, she watches you with red cheeks and a curious look, obviously eager with anticipation. 

You kiss her and taste yourself, and she doesn’t let it last long.

“Did you?”

You grin at her. “Like a boiling pot.”

“_ You did! _” She exclaims, positively pleased with herself. You touch her face and kiss her cheek, to reward her. 

“You’re an attentive lover,” you tell her, and your heart swells at Edelgard’s easy smile that only comes when it’s just the two of you. 

“I know,” she replies, ever proud. You kiss her because you love her beyond words. 

Before Edelgard can nestle into your side as she usually does, you bring her closer to you to bring her under you. She has made you feel like you’ve never felt before, let you soar heights you never thought you’d reach. You’ve learned so much from her, and you can only wish you can make up for the five years of heartache and loneliness your disappearance has given her. 

She must have noticed the trail of your thoughts taking you into the darkness that lurks in your head, and her hand - rough from war and anguish - touches your face, brings you back, gives you light. 

Edelgard kisses you and you feel your heart that hadn’t started beating until recently overflow. “I love you,” you say, for the first time. The ring you gave her is cool against your face. “I love you, El.” 

She’d never been the type to say so, but you feel its tenderness and its ferocity like a current. 

“Then show me.” Edelgard replies, and it makes you smile that even now, at this moment, she takes the opportunity to challenge you.

You kiss her neck, inhale the scent of her lavender oils she soaked in this morning, then you take one of her earlobes in your ear. It rewards you with a sound that makes your toes curl. 

“How do you want me, your majesty?” You ask, straddling her waist. You ask because you have no clue what to do except maybe mirror what she did to you. “Shall I…” you move to divest her of her smallclothes, but hands at your wrists stop you.

“If… if it’s alright, not tonight,” she tells you, and when you move to withdraw your hands, she brings it to her chest, on top of her loose bandages. “I liked what you were doing, before. I was... close.” 

That genuinely surprises you. “You were?” 

Embarrassed, she ducks her head. “It felt nice, okay?” Edelgard pouts, defensive. “I’m sensitive.”

You grin, oddly proud of yourself. Edelgard challenged you, and the opportunity just presented itself. “I’ll do that?” 

She nods, and you get to work. Impatient, you tear at the bandages - you know Edelgard has countless others - and she looks about ready to admonish you for it, but it seems as if her admiration for your raw, unbridled strength always wins. You toss the offensive garment aside as you ensure that no part of her skin is left unkissed. 

Her neck, the constellation of moles that scatter her body. You kiss the scar between her breasts with utmost reverence, like how a devotee would kiss the feet of Seiros’ marble image, and you are reminded that you dedicated your life to putting an end to the monsters who did this to Edelgard, and to countless other people. 

“Please, Byleth,” she whispers, looks at you with those eyes. 

You can never find it in yourself to say no to her wishes. 

Your hand finds her right breast and your muscle memory does the rest, rolling it between the pads of your fingers. Your mouth latches on to the other, sucking on the light pink nipple and the cry Edelgard lets out strikes you sharp, like a training sword to the stomach.

She inches closer to find some relief on your leg, and you provide it while keeping your eyes trained on her, watching how the strokes of your tongue and the movements of your fingers altered the intensity of her voice and the movement of her throat as she made these sounds. 

It turns out that her favorite is when your teeth graze against it and your blunt nails catch on to the bud. You repeat these ministrations, listening to Edelgard, committing the image of your view from her chest to your memory: Edelgard, slack-jawed with an arched back, her brows furrowed, and a blush that reaches her neck.

If you were to establish a church of your own, the stained glass at the center of your cathedral would be of what you see before you. 

_ Not that Edelgard would ever approve _, you think, but it certainly is nice to understand other people’s devotion. 

“I’m close,” she manages to say, the hands in your hair tighter than ever but you don't mind. “Don’t—don’t stop.”

You had no intentions to, so you put your back into it and move faster, determined to make her feel the same way you did. 

“Don’t worry,” letting her breast go with a pop, “I’ve got you.” And you mean it, in all senses. 

Then it comes, right after that. Edelgard gasps, grits her teeth, her back arching into you, tilts her head and it was surely one of the prettiest things you’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. You wish to see more of it.

How you’ll love another person after her, you’ll never know, but you kiss her when she comes down and promise that you’ll love her for the rest of your life. 

She gasps and takes a hold of your face to kiss you senseless, sweetly, with such appreciation you don’t know what to do with it except take it and admit that you love her, again. 

Your foreheads touch and you look at each other, the silence and the glow so lovely that it blankets over you like the moonlight and some lit candles inside the chambers. 

Neither of you is one to break silences, but you’re overcome with this need to tease her. 

“Did I?” You ask, mirroring her questions after you crest. For some reason, the two of you always whisper after these things.

“Did you what?” She says, over a yawn. She settles beside you, tucked under your arm, with one hand idly touching the muscles of your abdomen. 

“Did I show you?”

You feel more than see the hand that lands on her own face to hide her embarrassment. “I was just teasing, earlier. You always do.” Edelgard plays with your hands, voice quiet. “You’re very good at it.”

That relieves you, and you didn’t even know you were worried about it. You and dad always had odd ways of showing each other love, and falling for Edelgard made you face your fears of never being able to show her that you love her in a way she understood.

You say nothing to that because you can’t exactly articulate how you feel right now, only bringing her closer to your body as slumber approaches both of you, happy and sated and so very in love. 

“Not bad for people who hadn’t had a clue,” you press a kiss to her forehead. It strikes you that you two led a successful revolution, yet things like this had truly reduced both of you into messes. 

“Oh, do shut up,” She taps your stomach, but she’s laughing. 

You thank a nameless all-seeing being for returning a semblance of your instinct back, then you fall fast asleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> no one asked but i’m working on an edelgard/byleth/dorothea threesome, a short study of dorothea’s history with girls, and some other edeleth + edelethea fics. as you can see I am a poly propagandist
> 
> Come say hi, i’m @hausofbora on twitter, sharpshocks on tumblr


End file.
